RONNIE GILBERT, the bold and provocative female voice in the Weavers folk quartet (which also included Pete Seeger, Lee Hays, and Fred Hellerman) died on Saturday, June 6, 2015.
Ruth Alice Gilbert was born in Brooklyn on September 7,1926. Her parents were Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, and her mother was a card-carrying Communist. She grew up believing in the need for all of us to strive to make this world a better and more just place for all people.
For Ronnie Gilbert, music was the language of liberation, and her participation in the Weavers provided her with the context in which she could give voice to her politic causes.
Formed in 1948, the Weavers gained widespread popularity with Lead Belly’s “Goodnight Irene,” which made it to number one on the charts for thirteen weeks in 1950. Then came “Tzena, Tzena” and Woody Guthrie’s “So Long, It’s Been Good to Know You.” They also made Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land” popular. Unfortunately, success was short-lived. Their songs of protest and leftist politics made them targets for McCarthy-era anti-Communist red baiting. In 1952, they were blacklisted, their record contract with Decca was voided, and they were prevented from performing. In 1955, as the frenzy of Joe McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee witch hunt began to abate, the Weavers returned to Carnegie Hall for a triumphant comeback concert. They continued performing until 1964. Once the quartet broke up, Ronnie Gilbert began a solo career as a singer, actress, and psychotherapist. She became an inspiration to many younger singers, especially to the feminist Holly Near, who dedicated an album to her in 1974. Gilbert and Near started performing together with a concert in 1983, which produced the album Lifeline Extended; and in 1996 they came out with the album This Train Still Runs. In 1985, they toured with folksingers Arlo Guthrie and Pete Seeger and recorded under the name HARP (for Holly, Arlo, Ronnie, and Pete). As time progressed, Ronnie Gilbert continued to use her magnificent alto voice to sing about the outstanding social issues of the day: AIDS, anti-gay prejudice, feminism, homelessness, war, unemployment, racism, and all forms of social justice. She performed a one-women play about the trade union organizer Mary Harris Jones titled Mother Jones: The Most Dangerous Woman in America. And she developed a performance piece, Ronnie Gilbert: A Radical Life With Songs. Although heterosexual during most of her life, in the mid-1980s she met the person she termed “the love of her life,” Donna Korones. Her activism now included lesbian feminism. Her songs “When I’m Not Near The Girl I Love” (a takeoff on the song from Finian’s Rainbow) and “Marie (a love poem)” are testaments to her newfound sexuality. In 2004, Ronnie and Donna were married in San Francisco at the time when Mayor Gavin Newsom had officiated at same-sex weddings despite the fact that this was in defiance of state law. Gilbert was a lifelong agitator for all the right reasons. She inspired countless singers, including Mary Travers (of Peter, Paul and Mary) and Holly Near, who heard that irrepressible contralto voice and realized that she too had the right to sing with power and courage. She is survived by her partner, Donna Korones, her daughter Lisa, and a granddaughter. She lived in Mill Valley, California. Her memoir, Ronnie Gilbert: A Radical Life in Song, is forthcoming from the University of California Press this fall.
